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...in order to improve your impression and/or work this coming year?
It's almost 1860, folks. The election's coming up and with all this John Brown business, it's sure to be a bad one.
What is happening in your home town right now?
If you portray someone regularly, what is that person doing? Where does s/he stand on the issues of the day?
In this last year of relative peace, what is your town's economy like? Is there peace, or is there only the uneasy appearance of not-yet-war? Is there undeclared war raging?
How were last fall's crops? What are the prospects for 1860? Some farmers will be hard pressed to get a decent harvest for four years to come. Some will reap their fields for the last time.
What kind of animals are around you? How many of them will be taken by the war?
At the corner of our property, on a warm day in 1861, four riders arrived from Moundsville to announce the call for volunteers. Most of the young men in the neighborhood were standing around watching an oil well being drilled. The drillers dropped their work and the spectators joined them on the long walk to enlist. Too many of them never came home. Too many of their sweethearts never married. What are they doing in this last year before their worlds turn upside down?
What questions do you want to ask this winter?
I want to verify some of the recipes that have been passed down, to be sure they aren't postwar. I also want to know more about local fashion for miners' wives and women on small farms.
It's almost 1860, folks. The election's coming up and with all this John Brown business, it's sure to be a bad one.
What is happening in your home town right now?
If you portray someone regularly, what is that person doing? Where does s/he stand on the issues of the day?
In this last year of relative peace, what is your town's economy like? Is there peace, or is there only the uneasy appearance of not-yet-war? Is there undeclared war raging?
How were last fall's crops? What are the prospects for 1860? Some farmers will be hard pressed to get a decent harvest for four years to come. Some will reap their fields for the last time.
What kind of animals are around you? How many of them will be taken by the war?
At the corner of our property, on a warm day in 1861, four riders arrived from Moundsville to announce the call for volunteers. Most of the young men in the neighborhood were standing around watching an oil well being drilled. The drillers dropped their work and the spectators joined them on the long walk to enlist. Too many of them never came home. Too many of their sweethearts never married. What are they doing in this last year before their worlds turn upside down?
What questions do you want to ask this winter?
I want to verify some of the recipes that have been passed down, to be sure they aren't postwar. I also want to know more about local fashion for miners' wives and women on small farms.
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